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Saturday - December 1, 2001
- Harry Potter Passes $200 Million - Monsters, Inc. Next
- PBS Launches CYBERCHASE on January 21, 2002
- ABC / Disney Nabs Harry Potter Movie
- News Link of the Day - Beauty and the Beast is Back

Harry Potter Passes $200 Million - Monsters, Inc. Next
(by digitalmediafx.com) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone passed the $200 million mark on Friday and Monsters, Inc. will do the same today. Monsters, Inc. saw a huge drop off from last Friday, making only $2.26 million. Last Friday - the day after Thanksgiving - Monsters, Inc. made $10 million. In its first month of release, Monsters, Inc. has made an amazing $197 million domestically.

Meanwhile Harry Potter continues to tear up the box office and is expected to pass Shrek by mid-December as the highest grossing film of the year. Harry Potter did fail to capture the #1 spot on Friday, which went to the new movie Behind Enemy Lines.

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PBS Launches CYBERCHASE on January 21, 2002
(by digitalmediafx.com) PBS will launch a new animated series called CYBERCHASE (unrelated to Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase) on January 21, 2002. The new series was created by Thirteen/WNET and Nelvana.

According to PBS, "CYBERCHASE energizes kids (ages 8-11) with math power. Full of cyber-mysteries with eye-popping animation and a sly comic flair, the daily series features the voices of Christopher Lloyd and Gilbert Gottfried. CYBERCHASE sends the message that math is fun — is about problem solving and, boy, does it come in handy."

The new series is unrelated to the Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase video that recently came out. However, the name similarity has resulted in a legal tussle between Warner Bros. and PBS. Both initially announced their projects last February, within days of each other.

For the PBS CYBERCHASE series, each episode will take kids on an adventure driven by a different math concept — from tackling time in ancient Egyptian tombs, to cracking codes in creepy caves, or making sense of numbers in a fractured fairy-tale world. In their quest, the heroes use minds, not muscles, to overcome obstacles and danger everywhere. Guest voices include Bebe Neuwirth, Jasmine Guy, Geoffrey Holder, Phil Bosco and others.

"CYBERCHASE fills a critical void in children's television programming in mathematics," says Hyman Field, Ph.D., senior advisor for public understanding of research at the National Science Foundation. "It is an exciting and fun way for kids to participate in a subject that is so important in today's technological world."

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ABC / Disney Nabs Harry Potter Movie
(by digitalmediafx.com) In a record setting agreement, ABC has secured, from Warner Bros, all non-pay television rights to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, while simultaneously acquiring the advance rights to the upcoming November 2002 sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The deal was worth a reported $140 million.

The agreement gives ABC the opportunity to provide several of its family business programming platforms with the FX-filled franchise movie, including the ABC Television Network, ABC Family and Disney Channel. The terms of the agreement include a ten-year license for each film. The broadcast network will take the first run, with subsequent runs then shared between ABC Family and Disney Channel.

"Harry Potter is already considered a timeless family classic that audiences all over the world have embraced in record numbers," says Eric Frankel, president, Warner Bros. Domestic Cable Distribution. "We think that ABC, with its multi-family platforms, is a terrific vehicle to showcase this film, which is a phenomena like very few others in the history of our business."

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News Link of the Day - Beauty and the Beast is Back

According to USA Today:

"...The tale as old as time is newer — and bigger — than ever. For its 10th anniversary, Disney's animated musical Beauty and the Beast will dance onto IMAX and other large-format screens in 48 cities, starting Jan. 1.

And there's a bonus: An added six-minute sequence with those magical household furnishings, Mrs. Potts (Angela Lansbury), Cogsworth (David Ogden Stiers) and Lumiere (Jerry Orbach), harmonizing on Human Again, a tune by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman that was cut from the original..."

Click here for the full story.

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These news articles and all digitalmediafx.com content are ©copyright 2001 by Joe Tracy and may not be reused for any purpose without expressed written consent of the author and Digital Media FX. All rights reserved.